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Parker Palmer observes, "A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside him or her self, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.
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Ruth Haley Barton (Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry)
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Be not afraid."
As one who is no stranger to fear, I have had to read those words with care so as not to twist them into a discouraging counsel of perfection. "Be not afraid" does not mean we cannot have fear. Everyone has fear, and people who embrace the call to leadership often find fear abounding. Instead, the words
say we do not need to be the fear we have. We do not have to lead from a place of fear, thereby engendering a world in which fear is multiplied.
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Parker J. Palmer (Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation)
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A politician who brings personal integrity into leadership helps us reclaim the popular trust that distinguishes true democracy from its cheap imitations.
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Parker J. Palmer (A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life)
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A leader is someone with the power to project either shadow or light onto some part of the world and onto the lives of the people who dwell there. A leader shapes the ethos in which others must live, an ethos as light-filled as heaven or as shadowy as hell. A good leader is intensely aware of the interplay of inner shadow and light, lest the act of leadership do more harm than good.
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Parker J. Palmer (Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation)
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Self-knowledge and self-examination. Parker Palmer makes this very sobering statement about leadership: “A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside him/herself, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.
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Ruth Haley Barton (Pursuing God's Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups (Transforming Resources))
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The power for authentic leadership, Havel tells us, is found not in external arrangements but in the human heart.
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Parker J. Palmer (Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation)
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Quaker author Parker Palmer said, “A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside of himself or herself . . . lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.”[5]
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Lance Witt (Replenish: Leading from a Healthy Soul)
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Consciousness precedes being: consciousness, yours and mine, can form, deform, or reform our world. Our complicity in world making is a source of awesome and sometimes painful responsibility-and a source of profound hope for change. It is the ground of our common call to leadership, the truth that makes leaders of its all.
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Parker J. Palmer (Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation)